First Footage of a Hyperloop Accelerating to 200 Mph is Insane!

In 2012 Elon Musk announced that he wanted to build a $6 billion dollar form of vacuum-tube transportation borrowing ideas from inventor Robert Goddard's vactrain concept. Musk wanted to create what he called a "Hyperloop" - A sealed tube or system of tubes through which a pod may travel free of air resistance or friction conveying people or objects at speeds up to 760 miles an hour. Making a trip from Los Angeles to San Fransisco happen in 35 minutes. The future was announced and since then, it's up for grabs.

(Photo: @badger_loop / Twitter)

Since Elon Musk founded Hyperloop One, his own company to see the product through, there have been at least five other start-ups like Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, TransPod, and Arrivo that all want a crack at the future of transportation, and the race is on.

As the originator of the product, Musk is still at the forefront, releasing new footage of quoting Musk: "Hyperloop WARR pod run to 201 mph (324 km/h) in 0.8 miles near vacuum tube"

The footage was shot at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod competition over the weekend, and this is the winning design in action:

STROBE WARNING!

IF YOU'RE EPILEPTIC AND WORRIED ABOUT HAVING A STROBE SEIZURE, PLEASE DO NOT WATCH!

(Video from @elonmusk Instagram)

You can hear clanging and rattling because it's not a full vacuum. When they finally get a pod in a full vacuum it should not only be silent, but much faster.

The really cool thing about this is that it came from a competition. According to the most accurate resource on the internet, Wikipedia, "The Hyperloop Pod Competition is an incentive prize competition sponsored by SpaceX that is being held in 2015-2017 where a number of student and non-student teams are participating to design--and for some, build--a subscale prototype transport vehicle to demonstrate technical feasibility of various aspects of the Hyperloop concept. The competition is open to participants globally, although all judging has occurred in the United States."

This is brilliant. Why spend billions of dollars of your own money designing pods for your Hyperloop when you can get smart people to do it for free, and pay them if they do a good job?

Hyperloop could very well be the future of travel. Traveling across the country used to be so hard they made a successful video game franchise called Oregon Trail about it. So who wouldn't want to go from Los Angeles to NYC in less than two hours without having to lose half your cattle or get dysentery?